ws to the surface of the deep, entrancing the audience like magic.

Then came a depressing week. The polls flowed in, all day long, day after
day. The illusory hopes of many months faded into night. The three-figure
majority by the end of the week had vanished so completely, that one
wondered how it could ever have been thought of. On July 13 his own
Midlothian poll was declared, and instead of his old majority of 4000, or
the 3000 on which he counted, he was only in by 690. His chagrin was
undoubtedly intense, for he had put forth every atom of his strength in
the campaign. But with that splendid suppression of vexation which is one
of the good lessons that men learn in public life, he put a brave face on
it, was perfectly cheery all through the luncheon, and afterwards took me
to the music-room, where instead of constructing a triumphant cabinet with
a majority of a hundred, he had to try to adjust an Irish policy to a
parliament with hardly a majority at all. These topics exhausted, with a
curiously quiet gravity of tone he told me (M176) that cataract had formed
over one eye, that its sight was gone, and that in the other eye he was
infested with a white speck. "One white speck," he said, almost laughing,
"I can do with, but if the one becomes many, it will be a bad business.
They tell me that perhaps the fresh air of Braemar will do me good." To
Braemar the ever loyal Mr. Armitstead piloted them, in company with Lord
Acton of whose society Mr. Gladstone could never have too much.

III

It has sometimes been made a matter of blame by friends no less than foes,
that he should have undertaken the task of government, depending on a
majority not large enough to coerce the House of Lords. One or two short
observations on this would seem to be enough. How could he refuse to try
to work his Irish policy through parliament, after the bulk of the Irish
members had quitted their own leader four years before in absolute
reliance on the sincerity and good faith of Mr. Gladstone and his party?
After all the confidence that Ireland had shown in him at the end of 1890,
how could he in honour throw up the attempt that had been the only object
of his public life since 1886? To do this would have been to justify
indeed the embittered warnings of Mr. Parnell in his most reckless hour.
How could either refusal of office or the postponement of an Irish bill
after taking office, be made intelligible in Ireland itself? Again, the
p